


We Happy Few

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood-Relationships, Brotherhood, Dysfunctional Family, Families of Choice, Gen, Rivalry, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9477542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: John's relationship with Sherlock and with Mycroft. Focus on John competing with Mycroft for "brother" role.I honestly never thought to structure a story around the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V--but it seems most fitting for John the Soldier, of the brotherhood of the sword.





	

"What goes around comes around," John said, tugging the blanket tighter around himself. It felt good knowing the bastard who'd got them into this situation had been dumped in Eurus' cell. It wasn't all he'd have liked--he was the one who'd spent far too long in a cold well, first with the water rising, then clinging to the rope dropped from above waiting for help to come. He was willing to bet Mycroft was already neat and clean and dry and warm and swanning around bossing his betters and making some poor squaddy's life living hell. The only thing worse than military brass was civil service brass bossing the military like they'd earned the stars and deserved the respect. 

He glanced at Sherlock, expecting that mercurial shine and laughter, the shared moment of agreement that Mycroft got what he had coming. The smilewasn't there, and Sherlock didn't meet his eyes...nor was Lestrade amused. The older man in fact had turned, something in the set of his shoulders suggesting contained anger.

"Yeah. Give me a moment, boys..."

Sherlock was turning to Lestrade, not to John...

Asking Greg to take care of Mycroft...and, God, getting Greg's name right. That alone screamed that it mattered--desperately. Something hung between the two that cut John out, left him shivering in his damned blanket...alone.

He felt his anger coil in his belly. Mycroft Holmes had put them through this, been a manipulative, righteous little pill the entire time--and here they were, Sherlock and Greg, worrying about His Nibs, without a chuckle to spare for the justice of turnabout. It rankled. God, it rankled, just as Mycroft's words during their imprisonment had rankled as he urged Sherlock to sacrifice John and save Mycroft.

Sherlock might argue that he was trying to make it easy to choose to save John--to kill Mycroft. John couldn't pick a single word, a single gesture, that said that to him. To him it seemed perfectly clear that Mycroft had first tried to prove John was of no use, and then tried to shame Sherlock into killing his friend. John--the eternally disposable. The dupe. The expendable one. The one outside the loop.

Yeah. Trying to make it easy for Sherlock to save John? Riiiight. Sherlock might see it that way--but that just proved that Mycroft had managed to push him to the point of being ready to kill himself.

And that, John thought, stomach rising, would have been more than he could bear. His heart would break...again. At the hands of the mastermind who'd helped break it over and over again. Fucking Mycroft...

What was it about him and Sherlock, he thought, that they both had rubbish families? Pa and Harry had been his own burden, but Sherlock had fuckin' Mycroft, who had to be the biggest cock in existence--bigger than even Sherlock at his worst. Pa was long gone--too far gone to survive rehab, so he'd died on his final attempt to clean up. Harry was going to follow him one day. Mary was gone--for worse, but also for better, all her baggage finally out of John's life. He loved her, but was happy to be free of her past. Now he had nothing but sweet Rosie, and his brother of choice, Sherlock. 

He could wish Sherlock were as lucky. It would be a good thing, he thought, there in the night, in the cold field around Musgrave, in the cold zone of rejection as Sherlock and Greg cut him out. He and Sherlock, and all the complications trimmed away... It stirred memory, not of school and Oscar Wilde, this time, but of service, and of Shakespeare.

 _We few, we happy few, we band of brothers._ The words whispered in his ears, as they had for years, a Greek chorus commenting on his life in the army.  _For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile._ It was the brotherhood of choice--the family of shared risk.

 

John's first enlistment was at the age of sixteen. He was gagging to get away from it all--Pa and Harry and school and the feeling that nothing--nothing at all--was ever in his control, but always his responsibility. Pa was already dying. Harry was already drinking too, and showing every sign of following in Pa's footsteps: decent career that would be ruined in the end by the booze. John tried to help, and learned young that nothing really did any good. It was a private little romance between the drinker and the bottle, and John was only an unwelcome gooseberry, ruining the hot date. Pa loved whisky. Harry preferred gin. They waltzed through the days and nights with their chosen lover...and it didn't matter how many times John tried to get between them when they screamed at each other in drunken fury, or how often he poured the bottles down the sink, or just plodded on trying to pretend that he could stick to his own life without theirs ever getting in the way. The Army offered him a way out. A chance to see the world and get paid for it. Education. Training. Order. At least the disorder would be down to the enemy, not his service or his fellow squaddies. 

It was all he had hoped and more. The army transformed his life--and offered him a new family. A cleaner family. A saner one. The brotherhood of blood and sand. 

By the time he was twenty, he knew he wanted to get a medical degree. His platoon sergeant helped him work it all out--shifting to the reserve, going to college on a cadet's program, coming back to fulfill his obligations, and staying, because the Army was his home, his life, his everything. His family. His brothers.

"Sisters, too," Harry had grumbled one Christmas, when he came back on leave and tried to explain to her why he'd gone and what he loved about service.

He'd shrugged. "Sisters, too," he agreed, amiably. But the truth was, for him it was a brotherhood, with the women largely invisible to him. Some succeeded in becoming "fellow soldiers" so completely he simply ceased to register them as women in particular--they were honorary brothers, in spite of their sex. Others never blended, and to him were never really quite proper Army officers, no matter what their records might claim and their rank pins indicate. They were the women's auxiliary--useful, respected, admired. Often dated. Never quite soldiers, to him, though. Outside the brotherhood. Outside the bond.

He loved the Army. He loved being a soldier. It was a career, a lifestyle, a family, a philosophy. It was his stable center. His friends used to laugh at him, assuring him if he were cut open they'd find it written on his heart: the broad arrow marking him as property of the military. He laughed. As a doctor he knew it was a lie. As a soldier he knew it was true.

_We few, we happy few, we band of brothers..._

John Watson had found his home. After all, home is where your family is--where your heart is bound. Home is with your brothers.

 

"That was the most ridiculous thing I have ever done," John had panted, leaning against the wall of the entry in 221B Baker Street. 

"And you invaded Afghanistan." The sparkling laughter, the irony, the comfort of the relationship--quips John himself might have made any time these past twenty years, until the bullet had changed John's life. Jokes shared among brothers.

"That wasn't just me," John protested, without the aching longing he'd have felt saying it even the day before. Finally, at last, he was no longer alone. He and Sherlock grinned at each other, laughing... And then, like a miracle, Sherlock proved with the cane that it was all right, now. The bad times behind him. He had a brother again--and nothing, not Greg Lestrade with his suspicious team, or Jeff Hope, or Mycroft Holmes--nothing was going to take him away from that brotherhood again. He saw it in Sherlock's eyes--recognized it in the warm kinship, in the race toward danger rather than away: that soldier spirit. Greg didn't' have it--not that way. Mycroft Holmes, for all Sherlock claimed he "was the British Government," sure as hell did not have it. He might "serve Queen and Country," but he was no brother of John's...and he was a rubbish brother to Sherlock. All that poking and prying and misuse of government funds to stalk his baby brother...

A bit sick, if you asked John. He didn't blame his new brother for wanting to be away from the obsessive illness of the elder Holmes. 

He came to see himself as a buffer between Mycroft and Sherlock. A defense. 

(He never admitted how enticed he'd been the one time Mycroft let him work on a government case--the affair of the ill-omened Bruce-Partington plans. He never admitted how it galled him that from then on Mycroft treated him as a live-in nursemaid and nanny, but not as Sherlock's partner in the field...)(In his dreams he was James Bond, and he drove the Aston Martin it later proved belonged not to him--but to Mrs. Hudson.)

He never understood the power Mycroft had. Over Sherlock? No--it made no sense. (He never asked himself where Sherlock's money came from, when it didn't come from rich bankers or the blog. He never wondered how Sherlock could afford all those cabs...)(He never asked who'd seen Sherlock through life before John Watson arrived to save his brother from himself...) He never understood the power Mycroft had over the government, either. How could he get away with misuse of the CCTVs, the agents, the fucking helicopters, the sleek cars, the opaque, polished PA with her eternal smart phone? Was no one watching the watcher? The man meddled, and no one seemed inclined to stop him. (He could not let himself wonder if that meant there was more to the picture than was obvious to him. Just as when he'd challenged Greg about the drugs bust, he had to believe he knew implicitly all that was relevant...This was his brother, after all--his heart's brother. He knew what he knew...)

 

"Who do we invite to the reception?" Mary asked. "I mean, there's jolly near nothing on my side. Your side is going to have to provide. Does Sherlock have anyone to add to the list?"

John, remembering Sherlock's return, glowered. "Not so's I'd know. His parents aren't really in the picture, and the people who are we've already got on the list."

"He's got a brother, doesn't he?"

He wondered, years later, if there'd been a note in her voice, a suggestion of all she really was. Knowledge of all the elder Holmes brother was supposed to be. He couldn't remember. He reviewed that night over and over, and could not be sure if he'd heard something, noticed something, and denied it--or if she was so good, he was so clueless, that he'd heard nothing to let him know that Mary Morstan, formerly Rosamund Mary o AGRA, knew perfectly well who the _eminence gris_ of MI6 was. Not knowing only added to the anger. 

So much to be angry over. The Fall. The years of Sherlock gone and he himself mourning. And what, in all that time, did fucking Mycroft do? Mycroft, who owed him for lost dreams and lost dates and lost years and a lost brother... Mycroft, who John suspected even knew who Mary was. Who she'd been....who had never so much as told Sherlock.

Or made Sherlock withhold the information from John? It hurt, knowing if Mycroft asked, Sherlock would--he'd lie to John even about Mary.

No--no. That couldn't be true. John would have sworn that the first point at which Sherlock realized it was after the bi--

After Mary had shot him. (And why did it still hurt that there were--and always would be--two Marys in his heart? And why did he have to love both of them, even the one he hated and could not trust? The Mary who lived and died in Mycroft's world of shadows...)

Sherlock didn't lie. Not even for Big Brother. Not about that. Never about that.

John clutched it to his heart, clung to it. Sherlock hadn't lied. Big Brother had not taken that from John. Sherlock had chosen his heart brother, there.

(Sherlock loved Mary, John thought. He loved her like I loved my army mates. He wondered what symbol would replace the military broad arrow in their hearts. Spies weren't the same as soldiers. In that Mary and Sherlock were alien to John, living in Mycroft's world, proving to be Mycroft's kin...)

Over and over it progressed, the war between Mycroft and him, both fighting for their family, to protect their family. 

John was happy when Mycroft failed to attend. Happier when it turned into a romp: he and Sherlock and Mary, all racing to save yet another brother, John Sholto. Family. His family. His band of brothers, with Mary no less one of the boys than he was, her sex invisible to him in that moment, in spite of the white dress and the waltz that was yet to come. He told himself that was why Sherlock loved her--that her sex disappeared when they were on the hunt. 

He suspected this was not entirely true--that like kindergarten teachers and college TAs Mary was also Sherlock's unspoken crush--too old for him, and too wise for him, but the very image of all he could dream. 

He didn't mind, really. There was a smug pride in knowing he held the love of one person Sherlock could envy him but never take. Until, of course, Vivian Norbury took a gun out of her purse and fired, and Mary was lost to both of them.

And, still...

_For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be a brother; be he ne'er so vile._

Together they bled, he and Sherlock. Soldiers in life's battles. Celebrating the same victories. Mourning at the same grave. Together, in the face of the world.

It should have ended the issue...until Eurus.

 

Eurus.  The gun. The terror.

He'd woken to find he'd wet himself--his bladder had released while he was unconscious. It happened, he knew. He was a soldier. A doctor. He understood intellectually--the fear, the tension, the drug, the unconsciousness. It wasn't a shameful thing that his sphincter had made a choice on its own, what with him not precisely in residence and the legitimate fear that had come before. The sense of betrayal. The sure, certain knowledge Mycroft, damn him, had lied.

Lied. Lied. Lied to Sherlock. Lied to them all. 

Knowing it was no shame. Blaming Mycroft--it made no difference. He was shamed regardless. He'd woken as Pa had so often, as even Harry did, stinking with his own urine, shamed by his own failings. He couldn't do anything right, could he? (Especially with Big Brother "helping," forever hidden in shadow, forever indulging in overreach...)

The hate rose up and filled him, even as he stood and looked around the now-empty house. (Empty but for a dead Swedish national with a legal work permit found in pieces in a cotton laundry bag in the airing room...the stink sweet and sour and ripe when the door was slid open. The poor woman had decomposed more than somewhat. There was a puddle of shining, gluey seepage surrounding the stained bag. One more death to Mycroft's account...) He had to call the police. He made himself call Greg, because he could risk asking Greg to scare up a spare pair of trousers. Only when Greg had arrived and John had changed did John call Sherlock. He couldn't bear Sherlock knowing--Sherlock would taunt. Sherlock would comment. Sherlock would deduce.

No doubt he'd deduce anyway, John thought, knowing the scent of pee remained with him, a faint trace on his thighs, a stronger scent in the plastic carrier bag his original trousers were in. He stood stiff, in that peculiar position the military calls "at ease," which may relax the body but which in no way suggests a relaxed heart or mind or soul. He hoped Sherlock wouldn't comment. Before he did, before he could, John started to tell the story--his story, which carried two burdens of meaning: that Eurus existed, and that Mycroft had lied.

He could see the shock on Sherlock's face. He was glad to see it--too many kinds of glad. Finally, part of him thought. Finally he sees the true magnitude of his brother's meddling. Finally he sees how he's been abused his whole life long, putty in Mycroft's hands. Whoever Eurus was, however she'd disappeared from Sherlock's memories, Mycroft was in the thick of it, pulling the strings, making the choices, deciding the outcomes. Had he treated Sherlock with the Baskerville formula? Or with something like the stuff Culverton Smith used to scrub the memories of his friends? It didn't matter. Now Sherlock knew, and knew there was more to find, and John didn't hesitate to push forward, to urge the plan, to share his laughter with his brother, his heart-brother, as they decided how to drive Mycroft to confession.

It was wonderful. Like taking Dahaneh, in Helmand Province, sending the Taliban running. He laughed so hard as Myroft panicked. The posh-boy games with the sword and gun. The hysterical flight to find yet another locked door. The nightmare bits to deny his sanity--the bleeding portraits, the mad clown, the little girl...

Victory. At last, a chance to let Mycroft Holmes know he'd crossed one line too many, abused Sherlock (abused John) too often and too bitterly. A chance to let Mycroft know that, at last, Sherlock had turned. The next morning was even better, Mrs. Hudson happy to take her own pokes out of loyalty to both her boys. 

He tried not to remember Mary in the chair, or his own furious glee at the chance to humiliate her, the questions that were intended as insults. The summations intended to belittle her. 

He had no intention of remembering then, or comparing it to now. Each sharp question, each pressure point hit, was a victory. 

He and Sherlock: together. A team. Brothers in soul, if not in blood. God--the moment Sherlock rounded on Mycroft, insisting John stayed because it was, indeed, family--where Mycroft had intended to exclude John, Sherlock used the same scalpel to cut Mycroft out of the family. His last vow, battered, but still standing--bound to John and Mary and Rosie, not that fucking poncy bastard in the chair--their client, not their kin.

And then Mycroft had to start talking, and it all fell apart, and even John was left gasping at the magnitude of the story and the weight of Mycroft's burden.

From there on it felt like a battle...as much between him and Mycroft as between all of them and Eurus. Indeed, John felt like it was him against Sherlock's fucked up family, a battle in which he could offer Sherlock nothing at all but the brotherhood of the broad arrow--the soldier's family of choice. He and Sherlock--they would die for the country, for their families, for their loyalties. Fight if they could, die if they must, never wavering. He and Sherlock in territory where Mycroft could not tread. Mycroft was no soldier, after all. Was he? In the face of Eurus and Mycroft, of their shadows and mazes and webs, their lies, their games, their illusions, John, and John alone, could offer the brotherhood of valor, of the St. Crispin's Day speech. 

_And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day._

Except Mycroft was there. 

No, John assured himself, huddling in the blanket, angry and alone, ignored for that one crucial moment by Sherlock and Greg. No. Mycroft wasn't trying to spare Sherlock. He wasn't trying to sacrifice himself for Sherlock's and my sake. He wasn't fit to shoot the governor. (Nor was I) He didn't choose that path. (Well I didn't either!)

In spite of denial, in spite of John's rage, the truth simmered. In the end, Mycroft had a soldier's heart, too.

He put his brother first. (And me second.)(And himself last.)

John wished Mary were there. He was glad she was not. She'd tell him he lied to himself as soon as she'd tell him of Mycroft's lies.

And Sherlock was already turning back to him, and the moment was past, and his brother had returned to him, and Mycroft no longer mattered. John gripped the blanket tighter still, and the night closed around them as he and Sherlock walked down the hill to find some hot tea.

But he never forgot. Not really. Not in all the years to come, as Rosie grew and Sherlock flourished, and the blog brought in enough money to stop working at the clinic, and Mary drifted, a beloved ghost, through their rooms, their lives, their cases. He had his family of choice. He had his brother.

But Mycroft would never be gone...and Sherlock would forever love him. 

And John never would.

_But if it were a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending man alive._


End file.
